11–20 of 23 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've despaired at having consumed too much. It's commonly called hoarding, and it ruins your life. Never pay to store your stuff somewhere else.
The strangest thing is that a lot of the people I know who pay a lot for multiple storage lockers are poor and the content of the storage lockers is not valuable at all.
Simple answer - the Department of War.
- "But what about the others" - you ask.
- "What others?" - is the answer.
You're reaching from another, very narrowly scoped angle, but that's a wider problem with technology and automation. The economists since mid-20th century are talking about the UBI (universal basic income) to fight this problem: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income (wikipedia link) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22eQ9iLBfY4 (Varoufakis explains the concept very well) Of course, that's easier said…
IOW we will all become meditation gurus and lifetyle consultants and personal shoppers and perform other services that only the very wealthy can afford right now.
Right now, we attach income to work. You get job, you get paid. The two are bound at the hip.
For over 100 years we've been watching as machines take over doing the work. Society is more productive than ever, but with far fewer people. Right now we kinda gloss over this by creating "bullshit jobs". We have some social safety nets, but we scorn those who use them.
Fast forward another 100 years. Machines now produce everything. 1% of people have (necessary) jobs. 99% collect a "basic income", machines do all the productive work, all "income" flows back around as taxes to become redistributed as basic income.
Right now this sounds very dystopic. Culturally we still bind "job" to "worth" in a very visceral way. If I suggest "everyone gets paid, even if they dont have a job", that provokes a very intense response in some countries and a less intense response in others.
As mechanization increases, actual jobs decrease. This trend is obvious. As a whole the idea of creating a "bottom level" of society is quietly becoming mainstream. Generally pushing that "bottom level" upwards is happening.
It's not hard to forsee a future where production is sufficient, energy is cheap, the "bottom" is quite high, where we tax production (not people), where we dispense with the fiction of bullshit jobs.
Some cultures are more ready for it than others. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth along the way. Societal change has always been thus. But the end result is inevitable.
There is no real "loss" here. The transaction between the buyer and the seller still happens. The middle-man has to figure out a different way to earn a living by providing a different service that AI can't provide. There will always be a buyer and a seller if the product is something you want to buy.
Most of the economy is made up by middle-man trying to offer a "service" or capture value in-between. Getting rid of them is not going to "collapse" the economy. Some people will be displaced but I am not sure why the value producers or acquirers will really care.
Think about it this way: You have a middle-man between the producer (builder, ie: home builder) and buyer (ie: someone who wants to buy the house). Now this middle-man might be providing a "real service" (or not, ie: capture) and now he is replaced by AI or a combination of. There is no real "loss" here. The transaction between the buyer and the seller still happens. The middle-man has to figure out a different way t…
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-53020-2
Long story short, there are a number of different ways middlemen provide value:
- bringing people together
- acting as quality control
- holding parties to a higher standard in a way that both can stomach
and a few others.
Well worth a read.
If you own an organization and can afford to pay the salaries of 10 (or 2 or 20...) souls, you'd have to be very cheap and short-sighted to prefer reducing your payroll instead of boosting your productivity 10X (or 2X or 20X).
I don't see AI taking jobs, I see AI:
- Taking companies/organizations owned by cheap people.
- Taking huge projects ―like building a browser or an OS from scratch― to small groups or even solo developers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've despaired at having consumed too much. It's commonly called hoarding, and it ruins your life. Never pay to store your stuff somewhere else.
The strangest thing is that a lot of the people I know who pay a lot for multiple storage lockers are poor and the content of the storage lockers is not valuable at all.
There's an ultimate end-game here, but we're not culturally ready for it yet. Right now, we attach income to work. You get job, you get paid. The two are bound at the hip. For over 100 years we've been watching as machines take over doing the work. Society is more productive than ever, but with far fewer people. Right now we kinda gloss over this by creating "bullshit jobs". We have some social safety nets, but we sc…
Free market economics depends on the idea that resources are scarce. If you don't have scarce resources you don't have trade because everything you want you either have or can have in abundance. Although it's probably the single most important thing for your survival, no one trades air for example.
In a post-AGI world where there is no scarcity and everything is as abundant as air (for those with the AI) trade halts.
I suspect conventional economics, like many things, simply stops making sense in a post-AGI world.